Adris: The Bickering Eight Roll Call

In order to bring the players back up to speed on the Adris game, I'm publishing some notes of what has gone before. I'll only do a very general summary - the game ran from 1st to 16th level over 5 years of play. My game timeline is about 40 pages of bullet points, and I haven't even typed in about half of my chicken scratches. But I'll cover that in the adventure log post.

To whet everyone's appetite, here's a very brief overview of...

The Bickering Eight: PCs Past and Present

Adril - Half-Elf Sorcerer 16 - His transformation to Dragon through consumption of potions concocted from various defeated dragon parts is almost complete. The rest of the party stands behind him with catcher's mitts, waiting for his hoard to shoot out of his butt. He favors electrical spells since first level, and he loves to maximize electric bursts (lightning-flavored fireballs) to clear chaff from the battlefield. He tends to command attention given the fact that he's A) a freaking dragon, and B) has a Charisma score in the high 20s. He and Pandora got married in a simple ceremony during the course of the game. Everyone wonders what the offspring will look like, given Pandora's Wild Shape ability.

Asalia - Human Psion 14/Monk 2 - After starting Wizard training as a young girl and running away to a monastery, then dealing with her daddy issues and learning psionics from someone who fell from the sky in a falling star, she's finally settled on becoming a gestalt Psion/Monk. We're converting all her levels to Psion, but she'll retain most Monk abilities. She's also embedding crystals to grant special abilities as the Crystal Master prestige class. She still has something of a martyr complex. Her favorite tactic involves an anti-magic amulet, ridiculous Monk speed, jumping on and grappling the big monster, then cooking off Eel Touch as often as possible.

Hoffman (Thorolf's Cohort) - Human Fighter 13 - Thorolf got tied up building his flying boat, so he sent his second-in-command to help out the party for a while. Translation: Tom wanted to play a more front-line character for a while. Hoffman is very nordic, and very happy to go back to administrative duties for a while given the beatings he took during almost every adventure.

Janik (Dead?) - Human Paladin of Tyr 8 - Janik made some assumptions about leadership early on which didn't work well with the party. The Janik years were the origin of the party's name: The Bickering Eight. My favorite Janik moment was when one of the assassins from The Assassin's Knot befriended him and taught him Bluff, and he didn't know until later thanks to a Ring of Mind Shielding blocking his Detect Evil ability. The internal struggle when he discovered the deception was priceless. The last the party saw of him he launched himself toward a flying machine (a shuttlecraft carrying light mechs and displacer beasts) and brought it down into the sea with a large firey explosion.

Kelsik - Elf Rogue 16 - Kelsik has an artifact called the Glass Bow and a Ring of Elemental Command (Fire). He thinks he has a Glass Jaw and a Ring of Summon Enemy Melee Combatants. He's built around helping combat from somewhere outside the combat, preferrably measured in hundred-yard increments. If you want something set on fire or peppered with arrows from a half mile away, call Kelsik. Favorite line: "So I'm blind, but I can hear the enemy priest fighting the party, right? I'll take that shot. *twang* Critical hit!"

Mei - Human Rogue 5 / Monk 11 - The latest party member from the far-distant Empire of the Yellow Throne, Mei is still getting her feet underneath her. She's suffering from culture shock and the sudden burden of taking up the Blue Cube, but she's holding her own and figuring out how to contribute in interesting ways. Talking with a disembodied Rein makes learning Common and Latin much easier. Plus, she has access to Rein's Bardic Knowledge. She occasionally needs to put the Blue Cube in a bag to get some sleep, since Rein won't stop talking because she doesn't need to breathe.

Nasir (Missing) - Human Rogue 5 - He came from the Emirate of Sindar to the south, and given the on-again-off-again war between Arket and Sindar, he was never treated with much respect locally. He learned disguise to make life easier for the party, but he always spoke in a curious monotone. He disappeared one night and nobody was able to discover what happened to him after that. Hopefully his story will come out soon.

Pandora - Human Druid 16 - "The Druid is Wise," and she'll remind you with those exact words the next time you do something stupid. She was shipped off to study with her Aunt in Adris after botching tracking so badly that she almost got her brother killed. Her family is disfunctional, so she decided to create her own family with the party, especially Adril. She can control Green Juju (Life Energy), which she used to great effect when making out with a succubus. The rest of the party was stunned for a round in arousal, and then revulsion as the succubus shriveled into a withered husk. Plus, her parents invented Peep Mail. Anyone can summon these astral birds to carry written messages to another person recognized by PeepNet. The birds always peep when they pop onto your shoulder. The party is working on a mute function, as Peeps have drawn unwanted attention in the past.

Rein (Dead, but soul resides in the Blue Cube) - Human Bard 12/Cleric of Shoshen 1/Fighter 1 - Another victim of Multiclass Mania alongside Asalia, Rein embodied the spirit of curiousity. The party found her turned to stone in the Temple of the Black Flame and restored her. Unfortunately, she didn't age in the 50 years she was a statue, and she found she had no life to go back to. After some negotiations, she fell in with the party and good-naturedly put up with Wulfgar continually calling her "Stray." During the course of the game, she found a 2-handed sword and decided to train as a fighter in order to use it effectively. She fell in a battle with Drow and managed to inhabit the Blue Cube to prevent her soul from being consumed. Outstanding question in the party's mind: Did she actually go into the communication room and talk to people off-world, even after the rest of the party told her not to in no uncertain terms?

Thorolf - Human Cleric of Odin (Monad) 16 - He built a flying boat with the power of runic magic, and he'll invite you aboard just to show it off. He came south from the mountains of the far north to see the world. He ran into the party when they unraveled The Assasin's Knot and never looked back. He discovered that Odin was a mask of Monad, and one adventure involved travelling to the Astral Plane to restore the connection to Monad's home plane at the cost of one of his eyes, which he grew back at least cosmetically. He's back from building his boat and ready to skewer what needs skewerin' and heal what needs healin'.

Wulfgar - Dwarf Fighter11 / Wizard 5 - How cool is it to have a fighter who can cast spells and have them detonate on whatever his axe hits? That's Wulfgar. Yes, he gets ridiculous damage on a critical hit, aided by his bond to his artifact axe named Spirit Cleaver. And yes, the axe exists to remove incorporeal undead from the face of the planet. Oh, and he's debilitatingly hydrophobic. My favorite Wulfgar moment was the time the party had to cross a river to keep a bad guy from escaping. Wulfgar resisted the crossing. Adril got in his face, said, "I'm sorry about this," then hit Wulfgar with a quickened Hold Person, scooped him up, and took off across the water. 3 failed saves later, the party was on the other side carrying a hysterical but still-Held Wulfgar. Fun times.

Thanks for the feedback, guys! And I'm happy to hear that Asalia is making cameo appearances in other games. That makes sense given her propensity for picking up pieces of the landscape from other planes.

Wombat Whozit?

Better known as T.W.Wombat. Editor of Role Playing Games. Vanquisher of befuddlement. Working gamer. Dime-store philosopher. Childish father. Impromptu planner. Paradigm adjuster. System combiner. Intolerant of intolerance. Will GM for food.